In a bold move that’s less David vs. Goliath and more startup vs. tech titan, Hello.app, the brainchild of Barcelona’s own Álvaro Pintado, is eyeing a €2 million crowdfunding round, with €300,000 earmarked for Seedrs’ collective financing.
The pitch: A decentralized cloud storage platform that not only challenges but seeks to replace Google. With €500,000 already pledged, Pintado’s invitation is wide open: “Invest whatever you want; join our crowd.”
This isn’t Hello.app’s first rodeo; following a €170,000 raise and a €130,000 Enisa boost, it now targets a unicorn valuation of €1 billion within 2.5 years.
Their recent €107,000 domain purchase—despite investor skepticism—aims to skyrocket user numbers to 10 million by end-2024. Operating in 170 countries with a 20-strong team, the platform has already attracted over 150,000 users.
At the heart of Hello.app is a vision for an internet beyond the control of the few tech behemoths. Pintado and co-founder Alexander Baikalov, leveraging Web3 and Blockchain, envisage a space where users’ data remains their own.
Hello.app’s model pays users for mobile storage, offering a cheaper, more secure alternative to traditional cloud services. It’s a game-changer, promising to showcase the real value of users’ online data.
The key is in Fragmentation.
Unlike traditional cloud services where data is a sitting duck for cyber threats, Hello.app disperses data across multiple nodes, making it virtually indecipherable to hackers.
Dropping out of UPC to focus on this venture, Pintado is on a mission to dismantle the storage monopolies of Amazon and Google, aiming to be the first globally to achieve this with blockchain. “It’s a multimillion market, and we’re breaking new ground.”